Nature and Human Nature in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Its Reception

Mouzala, Melina G. (ed.)

This book includes papers on Nature and Human Nature focusing on Ancient Greek Philosophy and its Reception. The book encompasses papers of academics who participated in the homonymous Symposium which was held in October 2023 at the Netherlands Institute at Athens.
All papers deal with philosophers, philosophical works and treatises which belong to the broad subject of the inquiry into nature, including human nature.
A large period in the History of Philosophy is covered, beginning from Classical Antiquity (Plato and the Socratics [Phaedo]), running through Late Antiquity (Middle Platonism [Atticus], Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias), and concluding with the Latin Patristic tradition, Late Neoplatonism, and Byzantium (Augustine, Simplicius, Philoponus, Maximus the Confessor). The authors systematically investigate crucial issues that permeated the whole of ancient Greek philosophical thought and tradition; human nature and physiognomy in Plato and the Socratics, the parallel between the ordering activity of the world-soul (which is also called “nature”) and that of the individual soul in Middle Platonism, the relation between individual and universal nature in Galen, the parallel in the Patristic scholarship between Augustine’s and Maximus’ doctrines of will and their differences, Alexander of Aphrodisias’ view of the Peripatetic theory regarding the relation between the universe and the First Cause, Alexander of Aphrodisias’ view of nature and the causal roles he assigned to nature and the Prime mover, nature and soul as principles of motion and change in Aristotle’s Physica and De caelo according to the theories of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius and Philoponus.